NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 59
done your research it kind of leaves the whole effort null and
void because you can't show the value that you added to your
community. That's what's missing a lot of times. If you do the
process right, at the end you can show added value, which is
very important especially during a time when departments are
getting budgets squeezed.
Give us an example of what this process looks like in the
real world. What trends did you see in Philadelphia when
you completed the community risk assessment?
From doing our community risk assessment, we learned that
most people were dying in fires between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. We
identified older adults as the most likely victims, and we identified the areas of the city where they lived. We also noticed that
a big factor in many of these fatalities was that people in these
areas didn't have working smoke alarms. But residents were
rarely if ever calling us to check on alarms or to get new ones.
Part of it was they didn't know we had these resources, and
part of it was they didn't know they were being unsafe. So we
decided on a comprehensive plan to get out the message that
we can provide them with the tools they needed to be safe.
How did you do that?
Once we identified the high-risk areas, we went out and had
community meetings in those neighborhoods to educate
people. We put flyers and information about the risk in their
doors and started running ads to let people know that we had
resources for them, like free smoke alarms. We were handing out fire safety information and these one-page fire safety
checklists and telling people that if they checked off all these
boxes, their likelihood of having a fire would be dramatically
reduced. And because we supplied them with working smoke
alarms for every level of their home, if they did have a fire, they
would be much more likely to get out alive.
CONFERENCE SERIES |
COMMUNITY RISK REDUCTION | July 20
nfpa.org/conferenceseries
Many key aspects of community risk reduction,
including the ever-important community risk assessment, will be discussed in depth during " CRR: Insights
to Action, " a daylong slate of virtual presentations and
roundtable discussions happening July 20 as part
of NFPA's 125th Anniversary Conference Series. The
conference series will include 10 daylong events over
the next year, covering a wide range of safety topics.
Specific presentations for the community risk
reduction event are still being finalized, but topics will
include:
The importance of data-driven insights and actions
NFPA 1300, Standard on Community Risk
Assessment and Community Risk Reduction
Plan Development
Collaboration and partnerships in the CRR process
CRR and wildfire
The NFPA Community Risk Assessment Dashboard
Strategies for communities just starting their CRR
journeys
Visit the conference series website for updated
information and to see a full schedule when it
becomes available.
Were you able to measure the impact of that effort?
Absolutely. That year of the pilot, there were zero fire fatalities
in the area of West Philadelphia where we conducted that pilot
and a 37 percent reduction in fire injuries. We also had 50 percent fewer fires in the area, and a reduction in fire responses.
Anecdotally, before we started doing this, we never got calls for
smoke alarms until someone in the neighborhood had a fire.
But once residents better understood the risk, and once they
knew they had these free resources, more people started calling
us and it really helped us address that risk.
That's amazing. But in order to get there, you had to do a
ton of legwork.
That's the hard part, putting together a plan after you have the
data. I think some people are scared to take that leap of faith;
they think of it as a really big task. And it seems like it when
you start. But the hard part is just in the beginning, getting all
this stuff together. Once you have your community risk assessment done, everything else is a piece of cake, because then you
just update it every year. The first time, though, is a bear. But
it's worth it. Before we started off with this community risk
assessment approach, we had a more scatterbrained approach.
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL
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4/28/21 7:22 PM
http://www.nfpa.org/conferenceseries
https://nfpa.org/JOURNAL
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Summer 2021
Contents
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 1
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 2
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 3
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 4
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 5
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 6
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 7
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - Contents
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 9
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 10
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 11
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 12
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NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - Cover4
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